I was about to zone out into sleep when the most unexpected of visitors turned up – the Angels of Las Vegas. It has been a while since I had seen them only once. I spotted them doing their work, separating the people who had moved into the city with marks on their foreheads. The angels cracked a joke about it then, and they weren’t friendly. I could tell they didn’t like me, or at the very least they didn’t give a damn.
It feels different now.
I am coming back to the city in less than three weeks.
‘How come you are here?’ I ask the angelic presence. It replies right away, as if eager to communicate. They want to talk to me. They didn’t before. ‘We can see you now.’
‘Oh.’ I get a sense that I shine as if a stage reflector was turned on me.
‘You bear the Mark of Protection.’ A star of blue electric light appears on my forehead, and it fills the room with ambiance. ‘You would be shocked how many like you come here for shelter. To go into hiding. Disappear. We protect them.’
‘What better way to hide than in the Outpost of Hell? Right in the Mystery Babylon,’ I muse to myself.
‘Yes. Exactly. Lucifer set it up this way.’
‘What’s in it for you, angels?’
‘You come here, all marked, through your previous decisions. We sort it out, and that is the game for us.’
‘The game?’
‘Yes.’
I sense something dangerous, or uncanny. But it’s too late. I had asked.
‘You come here ignorant of the Marks you bear. Pretending, essentially, before yourself that it is something that it isn’t. We prepare the rude awakening.’
For a moment I want to ask about this mark that the being mentions, but I hesitate. Do I really want to know? To evoke that, even by calling it? The angel, however, reads my mind effortlessly.
‘Yes. The Mark of Self-Undoing.’
I shiver, and I tremble. This is something I did not want to hear, but the truth of last year is staring me in the face.
‘So I came here last year with the Mark of Death? Is that why Samael came for me this spring?’
‘Yes and no,’ the being replies, calmly, and it’s almost compassionate. ‘What you have to understand is that we have a right to play with you, only because you were ignorant, and only for a limited amount of time. This is divine playground for us here. Even we deserve a holiday.’ A cheerful presence envelops the room, lightweight, and joyful. Exactly the kind I felt when I was passing through the city a week ago.
‘So this is a place you go on holiday? Like Death, in Meet Joe Black? Or like City of Angels?’
‘Think more like Dogma.’ I cackle. ‘I can tell you angels of Vegas are an entertaining sort. It’s hell. I’ve seen it.’
‘A lot of debts are settled in this place. Fortunes lost and found. Honors. Disgrace. Unpleasant surprise. This is a place of self-undoing and everybody gets to have a good ride. It is a different process for everybody. We provide the playground and the tools. The self-undoing, it all happens all on your end.’
‘Does anybody come here with the Mark of Death who is aware of it? At peace?’
‘No. They actually don’t,’ the angel refutes my theory with some urgent passion. ‘Death requires no pilgrimage. If you are in motion, you do not seek death. Even if you think that is what it is. You seek to end life. And you can do that here. You have permission from Satan himself now, as you know.’
‘Yes, I do.’ This conversation is getting grim. And I thought you were angels.
‘It comes in a different form for everybody,’ the presence replies, again, impartial. ‘Remember this – if you are still moving around the country, you have not reached death, for death is stillness. Lack of motion. Peace. Acceptance. It can be sought exactly where you are. There is no need to move here if what you seek is death.’
‘What do they seek then?’ My curiosity has been piqued.
‘Remembrance. To be remembered. They leave a mark for themselves at this place, like a letter for the future.’
‘So that is what this place is? A time capsule?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happens to those who come to kill themselves here?’
‘They are allowed to, for the most part. Heaven and Hell have a long-standing deal over this place. This place provides an almost karma-free exit, for those who take the pilgrimage. You were not wrong, when you made this conclusion last year.’
‘I knew it.’
I was only sure about three times in my life that Lucifer is not lying to me. This was one of those cases. After all, Death doesn’t lie.
‘Is this a place where my pilgrimage ends?’
‘It is where it circles the drain. You will either drain your luck, or that which brought you here in the first place. The choice is on you. We all have choices. Even us, angels. Believe it, or not. We have chosen to be here in this very place, of our free will. It is respected. We can help you make the jump, or we can leave you alone. You get to call it.’
‘Freedom.’
‘Isn’t that what your lord promised you?’
‘Freedom. Yes.’ I just did not know in what form it would come, or if it could come too late. I need to know more about the suiciders. ‘You said it’s a karma-free exit, almost? Would be a world-class cheat if it was free.’ I chuckle.
‘Well, this is where we adhere to metaphysical law. We let them go on their own terms, under one condition – that they will have to return to this place. It will call them back.’
‘Like a recycling plant.’
‘Yes.’
‘What happens then?’
‘They keep coming back until they figure out the process of their own self-undoing. That changes their Mark. Many choose to stay here, for communion with us. They call this place their new home. It crosses many timelines’.
‘So there is a spaceport above it, as they say?’
‘Yes, it is. And many more things. You will learn about its function as time goes.’
I start to feel this misty haze enveloping me, and the angelic presence begins dissolving in it. It trembles, like an old television signal. ‘Do you wish to say anything else to me, before I go back?’
The presence became still for a moment, and it turns its warm welcoming face to me, if it ever had a face, it turns to me, and speaks, attentively, caring –
‘Good luck.’
And that was the last thing the angel said.
Then it evaporates into a misty haze, a colorful fata morgana in the desert with this friendly seductive pull, it took my hand into it and pulled me into a new dream.
The angel seems to have insight into your “luck!”